Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

It was while she was gathering up food for herself and Enica that they started. They might not have known what to say to Enica’s face, but they had plenty to say behind her back. Tilla had a feeling they were only saying it because she herself was there. They had had all afternoon to talk about the terrible things that might be happening to Branan: Why go over them all again now? As if she had not thought of them all herself.

The searchers, they said, might be too late. Branan might be dead already, and buried, and would never be found. He might be held captive somewhere, alone and afraid, at the mercy of a madman. He might be sold to a brothel, where shameful things happened. Or he could be on the way to Rome as a slave or even a trainee gladiator. He might have been sold to the Northerners. With the wall being built, he could be lost forever. And on and on.

Tilla wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and scream, “Shut up!” Instead she hacked the knife through ham she did not really want to eat, and piled more onto her wooden platter.

Imagine never finding out, someone said. How terrible would that be for his family? Waiting every day for news. The old man might-they all might-die never knowing . . .

Tilla turned away from the table, unable to stand this mischief-making nonsense any longer. “He will not be on the way to Rome,” she said. “The soldiers will check with the slave dealers. There must be laws against selling stolen children.”

There was a moment of awkward silence before a voice pointed out, “A child stealer will not give a pig’s fart what the law says.”

Someone else said, “Nor will those sort of buyers, if they smell a bargain.”

Tilla bowed her head, feeling her face begin to redden. She had meant that it might be harder than they thought for the kidnapper to sell the boy, but now that she thought about it, what comfort would that be? If he could not be sold, it was more likely that he would be disposed of.

It had been just as foolish as when she told Cata’s family to put in a complaint to Regulus’s centurion. How Roman she must seem to these people. She wanted to say, The world is different out there! In other places, you would be the ones who did not fit in! But they would never understand, and with all her traveling and her Latin and her fancy reading and writing, she knew no more about how to find Branan than they did.

“That is not how things are here, Daughter of Lugh,” put in a kinder voice. She looked up to see Cata’s mother. “Perhaps they keep all the laws down in Deva, or even across in Coria where you come from, but it is different here.”

“We trusted the Romans to deal with that scum who hit our Cata,” put in a voice, gesturing toward Cata’s injured face and bandaged hand, ignoring her protest of “He is not scum!” to add, “Instead of helping, they came and burned our house down!”

To Tilla’s relief Cata’s mother took up the fight. “You are leaving out part of the story, girl. You and your brothers were told to leave him alone, and you did not.”

“I told you too!” put in Cata. “I begged you all to let him go!”

“He wasn’t hurt!” retorted her sister. “And it was the army’s fault for doing nothing about him. Then they followed us here and turned this place upside down as well.”

The woman with the lisp joined in. “They didn’t even apologize after the old man complained. And now they have taken his boy.”

“Sh!” hissed the woman beside her, pointing at Tilla.

The woman with the lisp straightened her neck and raised her chin as if to show she was ready to suffer any blow for her honesty. “I do not care if there is a spy here,” she said. “I speak my mind. You all know what I’m saying is true.”

“Complaining to the army just makes them worse,” put in the sister.

“Exactly! Now that Senecio is making a fuss about them taking his son, he had better keep a good watch. You never know what they will do next.”

Tilla put the platter down. “Most of the soldiers do not want trouble,” she said. “They just want to build a wall and go back to their base.”

“That is not what I heard,” put in someone else. “I heard that none of the soldiers want the wall, either. They are saying in private that the emperor is weak and it is a sign of defeat.”

“If the officers find anyone who says that,” said Tilla, knowing it was true and cross with herself for being sucked into this argument, “he will be very sorry. Soldiers are supposed to obey orders, not give opinions.”

“Exactly!” said the woman, wagging a forefinger in the air as if Tilla had just proved her point. “Why do you think they started this rumor about the body in the wall? Because they don’t want to build it! They want it pulled down! But they cannot say so. This way they can put the blame on us and then they have a good excuse to arrest anyone they want. And they’ll get a good price for a strong young lad.”

“But they are not saying anything about the rumor!” insisted Tilla, not sure where to start with such nonsense. “They think Branan has been taken by a criminal.”

“You see? It is never their fault!”

“I did not say that!”

“Ah, you wait and see what they do to their own men when they question them,” said someone. “Wait and see if they flog them, or use the hot irons on them like they do with us.”

“Of course they won’t!” said Cata’s sister. “Look what they did to that Regulus: a nice warm bed and a transfer to another unit.”

Somebody said, “If I got my hands on them, they’d be singing like skylarks by now.”

“Somebody else should have gone,” said the woman with the lisp. “The old man, bless him, he’s too trusting. We can’t waste time asking nicely. What good will he do, sitting there and starving? Every moment counts!”

Tilla was tempted to demand, What good will you do, sitting around and complaining? But Enica was right: They meant well toward Branan and his family. So instead of arguing she filled a cup with beer, picked up the platter, and levered the door open with her foot.

Enica had abandoned the bonfire and was gazing out over the gate. “I thought I heard horses,” she said. “And then I thought, I’ll ask Branan to climb the tree and look .”

Tilla rested the cup and platter and on the gatepost. They watched in silence as a blackbird flew down onto the track and glanced round before stabbing at something in the mud. It flew up again at the sound of Enica saying, “That is a great deal of food.”

For the first time Tilla looked at what she had piled onto the platter. Bread and cheese and ham and bean pottage and two chicken wings. Enough for four people. “I wasn’t thinking.” Back in the house, they would be saying she was greedy. She offered the platter to Enica. The hands that tore at the bread were rough and ingrained with dirt. Senecio was no fool, for all his singing to trees: He had married a hard worker. And perhaps he knew those other women well enough to know that Enica would need Tilla for support. It was good to think that someone, at least, had faith in her.

Enica led her toward the old bench outside the house, the place where, in better weather, women might sit chatting in the sunshine, spinning fleece or preparing supper while they kept an eye on their children playing in the yard. The hens began to strut around them, stabbing at invisible food between the cobbles and watching for tidbits.

Tilla balanced the cup on the bench and placed the food between them to share. “I have been thinking,” she said. “I do not know what the soldiers are doing beyond searching the forts and questioning their own men. But I am wondering if there is another way to search that nobody has tried.”